der to that of more or less excusable h Pharisees were declared by the Saviour the blood of Zacharias, the blood of ri and of all the saints and prophets who came. But how were the Pharisees g built the sepulchres of the prophets, the admired them; but they were guilty, in the children of those that slew the proph in this sense, that they inherited their s posed the good, in the form in which it in their day, just as their fathers opposed played to theirs; therefore He said that to the same confederacy of evil, and tha the blood of all who had been slain shoul generation. Similarly we are guilty of Christ. If you have been a false frien cowardly disciple, a formalist, selfish, a goodness, an oppressor, whatever evil yo in that degree and so far you participate which the Just One fell a victim-you a mighty rabble which cried, "Crucify Him." For your sin He died; His blood threshold.

Again, He died for all, in that His sacrifi the sacrifice of all. We have heard of th "imputed righteousness;" it is a theolo sion to which meanings foolish enough a attributed, but it contains a very deep tr shall be our endeavor to elicit.

Christ is the realized idea of our huma God's idea of man completed. There is ence between the ideal and the actual-1 a man aims to be and what he is; a d

tween the race as it is, and the race as it existed in God's creative idea when He pronounced it very good.

In Christ, therefore, God beholds humanity; in Christ He sees perfected every one in whom Christ's spirit exists in germ. He to whom the possible is actual, to whom what will be already is, sees all things present,gazes on the imperfect, and sees it in its perfection. Let me venture an illustration. He who has never seen the vegetable world except in Arctic regions has but a poor idea of the majesty of vegetable life, a microscopic red moss tinting the surfaco of the snow, a few stunted pines, and here and there perhaps a dwindled oak; but to the botanist, who has seen the luxuriance of vegetation in its tropical mag nificence, all that wretched scene presents another aspect; to him those dwarfs are the representatives of what might be, nay, what has been in a kindlier soil and a more genial climate; he fills up, by his concep tion, the miserable actuality presented by these shrubs, and attributes to them-imputes, that is, to them---the majesty of which the undeveloped germ exists already. Now, the difference between those trees seen in themselves, and seen in the conception of their nature's perfectness, which has been previously real ized, is the difference between man seen in himself and seen in Christ. We are feeble, dwarfish, stunted speci mens of humanity. Our best resolves are but with ered branches, our holiest deeds unripe and blighted fruit; but, to the Infinite Eye, who sees in the perfect One the type and assurance of that which shall be, this dwindled humanity of ours is divine and glorious. Such are we in the sight of God the Father as is the very Son of God Himself. This is what theologians

-at least, the wisest of them-meant 1 righteousness." I do not mean that al written or spoken on the subject had thi of it, but I believe they who thought truly they did not suppose that, in imputing ri there was a kind of figment, a self-decep mind of God: they did not mean that, b will, He chose to consider that every act did was done by us; that He imputed or us the baptism in Jordan, and the victory derness, and the agony in the garden, or lieved, or acted as if He believed, that died each one of us died; but He saw hu mitted to the law of self-sacrifice, in the idea He beholds us as perfect, and is satisfi sense the apostle speaks of those that ar yet "by one offering He hath perfected fo that are sanctified." It is true, again, that us, in that we present His sacrifice as ours. of the death of Christ consisted in the su self-will. In the fortieth Psalm, the valu other kind of sacrifice being first denied, follow, "then said I, Lo, I come, to do God." The profound idea contained, theref death of Christ, is the duty of self-surrende

But, in us, that surrender scarcely de name, even to use the word self-sacrifice with a kind of shame. Then it is, that t almost boundless joy in acquiescing in th death of Christ, recognizing it as ours, and ing it to ourselves and God as what we aim cannot understand how, in this sense, it can rifice for us, we may partly realize it by ren

the joy of feeling how art and nature realize for us what we cannot realize for ourselves. It is recorded of one of the world's gifted painters, that he stood before the masterpiece of the great genius of his age, --one which he could never hope to equal, nor even rival,—and yet the infinite superiority, so far from crushing him, only elevated his feeling, for he saw realized those conceptions which had floated before him dim and unsubstantial: in every line and touch he felt a spirit immeasurably superior, yet kindred, and is reported to have exclaimed, with dignified humility, "And I, too, am a painter!" Or, again, we must all have felt, when certain effects in nature, combinations of form and color, have been presented to us, our own idea speaking in intelligible and yet celestial language; when, for instance, the long bars of purple, "edged with intolerable radiance," seemed to float in a sea of pale, pure green; when the whole sky seemed to reel with thunder; when the night-wind moaned. It is wonderful how the most commonplace men and women beings who, as you would have thought, had no conception that rose beyond a commercial speculation, or a fashionable entertainment—are elevated by such scenes; how the slumbering grandeur of their nature wakes, and acknowledges kindred with the sky and storm. "I cannot speak," they would say, "the feelings which are in me; I have had emotions, aspira tions thoughts,-I cannot put them into words. Look there! listen now to the storm! That is what I meant, only I never could say it out till now." Thus do art and nature speak for us, and thus do we adopt them as our own. This is the way in which His right eousness becomes righteousness for us. This is the

way in which the heart presents to God of Christ. Gazing on that perfect Life, w say, "That is my religion, that is my rig what I want to be, which I am not; th ing, my life as I would wish to give it, not checked, entire and perfect." So the their hearts big with unutterable thoug "what or what manner of time the spi which was in them did signify, when it tes hand of the sufferings of Christ, and c which should follow;" and so with us, un into prayer: "My Saviour, fill up the blotted sketch which my clumsy hand has divine life, with the fulness of Thy perfect feel the beauty which I cannot realize: thine unutterable purity:

'Rock of ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee.'”

II. The influence of that sacrifice on introduction of the principle of self-sacrifi nature," then were all dead." Observe, He died that we might not die, but that in we might be dead, and that in His sacrifice become each a sacrifice to God. More death is identical with life. They who, i sentence, are called dead, are in the seco inated "they who live." So, in another pla crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live therefore that is, the sacrifice of selflent to life. Now, this rests upon a profou The death of Christ was a representation of God. To me this is the profoundest of